‘It’s not much,’ said Reade. ‘I’ve got a statement you can use,’ he added, handing Garry a Xeroxed sheet. ‘It’s got the car make and model etc. When he drove off, the plate stayed in shadow.’
‘And the CCTV stuff had been destroyed? No way of following him out of the town centre?’
‘Right,’ said Reade unhappily. Garry nodded, having lost the plot.
‘What’s that?’ said Dryden, standing and pointing at the rear of the car. It was a four-wheel drive. The rear windows, all the windows in fact, had become clouded with condensation. But in one side pane there was a small black irregular patch of clear glass. ‘Can you run the tape back?’
Reade pressed the rewind. The drug seller retreated into the shadows, reappeared, and got into the car backwards. Suddenly the small black window in the misty pane was gone.
‘Someone else?’ asked Garry.
Dryden shook his head: ‘I think it’s why a lot of the kids didn’t get in the car. When the first punter got in you could just see a dividing mesh – between the back and the passenger seats. It’s a dog. Bit of security?’
Reade let the film run forward again.
‘Could we have a still?’
The detective rummaged in a file and produced a black and white ‘video-grab’ image. It was grainy and indistinct, but it caught some of the menace of the original footage.
‘Great,’ said Dryden, handing it to Garry. ‘We’ll give it a good run.’
Back upstairs Dryden waited until Reade had given Garry more data on local drug-related crime to boost the story before bringing up Declan McIlroy’s case. ‘There was nothing on calls, but have there been any reports of a bogus caller in High Park Flats – or on the Jubilee? Someone posing as a health visitor perhaps, or doctor. There was something on a bogus plumber – but that was out of town.’
Reade took them back to the deserted office. He rifled through some files on one of the desktops, then booted up a PC.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘As you said, we’ve got a joker pretending to be a plumber, but that’s just the older semis on the edge of town. He’s never touched a flat. That’s pretty rare, of course; there’s less to filch and it’s much more difficult to get away quickly in one of those blocks if the con fails and they get sussed. High Park is not a good place to upset the natives.’
Dryden nodded. ‘Declan McIlroy had a visitor the night he died. I’m pretty sure it was a bogus doctor – he took in the old folks next door as well.’
‘Get away with anything?’ asked Reade, making a note.
Dryden shook his head: ‘Perhaps the motive wasn’t theft.’
Reade sat at the PC and keyed in some instructions. He read quickly, then gave Dryden a sympathetic look: ‘Not much suspicious about McIlroy’s death,’ he said. ‘Lonely guy, history of mental illness, neighbours heard nothing. Inquest was this morning.’
Dryden felt a hot spate of anger. ‘Shit – that was quick. What’s the hurry?’
Reade straightened. ‘It was today or wait a week – nobody objected. We like to expedite such matters.’ He blushed, knowing he’d tried to fob them off with a long word.
‘Verdict?’
‘Misadventure. Death by hypothermia, but he had enough booze in him to knock out a rugby team plus a dangerous level of painkillers.’
‘Any witnesses called?’
Reade was shaking his head. ‘Oh. Yeah – there was. Social worker. Ed Bardolph, and a relation – sister.’
Dryden’s spirits rose. He knew Bardolph, and he knew where he’d be.
‘Thanks. I’ll have a chat, I know Ed. Look, I know you’re stretched but I really think this case is worth a second look. There’s been an intruder at the flat as well – the dead man’s flat, today. The neighbour, Mr Timms, can fill you in. A visit would pay dividends.’
Reade nodded vigorously. ‘That’s one of the problems with the Jubilee. Anything left empty gets stripped pretty quick. I’ll get the community man to pop in, no problem. I’d better take some details as well…’
Dryden nodded, knowing he’d been brushed off. But for once it suited him. He’d done his duty and reported both incidents; if DI Reade didn’t want to take it seriously, that was fine by him. He’d ring on Monday to check any progress but as it stood he could legitimately write a story saying that police were investigating the bogus caller and any possible links with Declan McIlroy’s death.
Reade made a note of the facts on the bogus caller and the intruder and got Dryden’s signature on both. They left the detective shuffling paper, searching for his coffee mug. The automatic doors at the front counter swished open, expelling them into the cold air, and above them the starlings rose as on a single wing.
12
Dryden walked down towards the river from Market Square. He wrapped his oversized black coat around him, the buttons and buttonholes overlapping across his narrow chest. Across the Fen a snow squall smudged the black horizon like an artist’s finger, while in the foreground skaters criss-crossed the frozen watermeadows watched by a scattered crowd lifted wholesale from a Brueghel landscape.
At the foot of the hill lay the district of Waterside, a collection of warehouses and cottages which had grown up alongside the river’s wharves. Beyond that lay the frozen river. Dryden noted that the ice here was patchy and floated in rafts, unlike the solid white crust that had encircled PK 129 upriver. But even here, despite the tidal ebb and flow provided by the sluice gates downstream, thicker pack ice was creeping out from the banks. By dusk the ice would be solid from shore to shore.
Dryden crossed the river by a steel footbridge as a single rower passed beneath, swaddled in jumpers, heading quickly for the sanctuary of a boathouse, the skiff’s hull nudging aside miniature icebergs. On the far bank lay Quanea Fen, a skaters’ paradise, lit by a low sun just now breaking through a bank of clouds. The temperature had fallen below minus 6 degrees centigrade for three consecutive nights – the official stipulation before a championship skating event could be held in safety. Sympathetic farmers had opened the field sluices to flood the Fen, preparing the vast arena for the event. Ice already covered the two-inch-deep man-made mere, creating the perfect venue for the championship – a solid steel-grey surface several times bigger than any Olympic rink.
Wooden blocks with flags were being set out along the oval of a 400-metre speed-skating course. On the track itself volunteers worked with wide brushes to clear away the tiny stipples on the ice left by the flurries of hail and snow. Around the arena an ice fair clustered; a couple of burger bars and a tea and coffee stall were already doing brisk business. A small travelling fair, usually mothballed for the winter, had been hustled out of hibernation to make the most of the expected crowds. A coconut shy and a child’s roundabout were already up and running. Duckboards had been laid down for those not on skates and a troop of council workmen in fluorescent yellow jackets were stringing lights from posts sunk in the ground.
It was a scene in silver, grey and black, except for a single blazing brazier set on wooden blocks, a glimmer of cold orange like a blackbird’s beak in a winter landscape. Then, suddenly, a half mile of multi-coloured lights flickered on between their posts, then flickered out after the test was judged a success.
Ed Bardolph, the social worker who had been a witness at Declan McIlroy’s inquest, was chairman of the Fen Skating Committee, the official body which alone had the power to convene the championships and regulate the races. Dryden knew the FSC was due to meet here, on the ice, to make its final decision. In the distance he could see a knot of men clustered around the brazier beside a brace of Land Rovers and a skidoo. As Dryden approached, moving gingerly over the ice and wishing he’d brought his skates, the group formed a circle around a hole in the ice beside the fire, like Eskimo fishers.